The Advantages of Youth
by blinkblink
Summary: The Dawn!verse. Four times Sir Arthur uses Walter's age to his advantage, and one he doesn't. Youth isn't always a drawback. Even in Hellsing. Especially if you're willing to take advantage of it. No pairings.


Disclaimer: Don't own Hellsing: The Dawn or the characters.

_I: The Learning Advantage_

Walter has been a Hellsing employee for one year, ten months and three days before Sir Arthur Hellsing ever lays eyes on him. This is not due to negligence.

Walter strides in through the double oak doors with the easy confidence of a man who knows just how dangerous he is. It would be more striking if he came up past the elbows of the guards on either side of them. He is, at this point, not quite ten years old.

Sir Arthur watches with hard eyes as the boy's glance flashes over his once-again dirty office. Words from the child's annual reports flicker through his mind like lightning in clouds: _clean; meticulous; extremely focused._

The photographs don't do the boy justice. They capture his stature and his slightness, his pale skin and dark messy hair, but they fail entirely to convey his burning eyes. Walter has the eyes of the more desperate kind of soldier, the one who is always only one step away from leaping out of the trench and barrelling straight into no-man's land and certain death.

Sir Arthur opens his cigar box and picks one out, puts it to his mouth and lights it slowly while watching the youngest trainee Hellsing possesses. The boy stares flatly back, eyes simmering as they pass over Sir Arthur's crooked tie, the stains on his gloves and his creased handkerchief.

The knight lets out a breath of smoke in a wide puff and leans forward. "What do you think of my office?" he asks, with gruff sincerity.

The boy's eyes snap to his, like a hunting cat catching movement. After only a split second of consideration, he says, "It's filthy. Sir."

Sir Arthur suppresses the twitch in his lips. "You prefer tidy rooms?"

"I prefer spotless rooms, sir. But as that's my folder, you must already know that." He indicates one of several manila folders partially buried under the foothills of paperwork on the desk with a tilt of his head.

As tests of leeway go it's primitive, but after all, the boy's not even ten. Sir Arthur's seen worse from ministers of the Crown five times his age.

"You're right. I do. And, since you're here and my name's on the door outside, I presume you know who I am," he replies evenly, resting his elbows on the desk and weaving his gloved fingers together.

"Yes, sir." The boy straightens slightly, taking the hint.

"Good. Now," he leans forward and rests his chin on his hands, "tell me, Walter: why do you think you're here?"

The boy doesn't blink, those burning eyes still boring into him. The files continue flickering in Sir Arthur's mind: _Dorneas shows no fear, shows no sadness, never cries._

"You saw my training session last Monday," deduces Walter. "We were on the demonstration field; you only train there if someone's watching. So now you know how good I am. I'm the best trainee you have, and I'm not even allowed to use weapons." His tone isn't one of pride or frustration. Just irritation, as though men permitted to use weapons should be better.

He's right. They should be. But this boy is far beyond any of them. _You teach him a move that would earn a gymnast a full 10 points, and he figures out how to use it to dislocate a man's shoulder._

"Yes. You've shown remarkable skills. That is part of the reason I asked to meet you today, when I've made a point of not seeing you for the past two years. Hellsing has made many very unpopular employment choices, but I'm not sure that we've ever made a more reprehensible one than hiring an eight year-old boy. Until I was sure I could back that choice, I'm afraid I couldn't get involved."

"Then why did you make it, sir?"

Sir Arthur fixes him with a steady eye and lets the gloves come off. "Because what the rest of the country doesn't understand is that we are far too pressed, and if we do not use every last advantage we have, the cost in lives will be immense. And because you, Walter, were born to bury the undead."

At this the boy does twitch, just a tiny muscle spasm in his cheek. Sir Arthur wonders what his foster family, all former Hellsing operatives, have told him about his mother. Hopes he hasn't seen the pictures. _Predilection for causing pain, short temper, enjoys watching fights._

Sir Arthur waits for a response and, when none is forthcoming, continues. "I have asked to speak to you because we have an opportunity for you. _I _have an opportunity for you. A chance to become something more than a regular soldier. Troops do the grunt work of Hellsing, they're the people we send in when we are overwhelmed, when situations get out of control. But most of the real disposal work is taken care of by a very small group of people. Officially they are called agents. More usually, though, they're known as trash men. Their jobs are the most difficult and most dangerous, and on average they do not live very long. The undead are faster and stronger than humans, and our weapons are not very effective against them."

"I'm faster than most humans, sir. And when I'm older, I'll be stronger," says Walter, shrewdly. _High pain threshold; extraordinary degree of coordination; extremely quick; abnormally strong for his age; excellent reflexes._

Sir Arthur nods steadily. "Very true. Most importantly, your age allows you a much quicker learning curve. I believe we may be able to train you in less orthodox methods. Methods other trash men have been unable to use for decades." There's an old dusty box with nothing but a pair of gloves and some spools of thread-thin wire sitting in the basement with the Hellsing crest on it. Sir Arthur thinks it may be time to blow the dust off it.

Walter says nothing, but his eyes may be shining brighter than before. They blaze like a ship's lights in the night.

"It's up to you. You're free to refuse: if you do, you'll be trained as a regular soldier. If you accept, your schedule will change significantly. While you were not technically being trained in combat, I could ignore your portfolio. However, due to the potentially political nature of this decision I cannot authorise that training unless I keep a close eye on you myself. You will become a member of my personal staff; my valet, perhaps. You will become a weapon, to be pointed and used as I direct. If you are not fast enough, or strong enough, or good enough, you will die. Probably even if you are, you will still die. It's your choice." He leans back, and taps the ash off his cigar.

Walter's face is calculating, but his eyes betray his eagerness. Still, he speaks carefully. "I was told when I joined Hellsing that you were my commander, that that was more important than a father. That I owed all my loyalty to you, above everyone else save the King. That if I were given an order, I had to carry it out. And that if I were ever given an order by you, I had to carry it out _yesterday._"

Sir Arthur raises a sharp eyebrow. "Yes?"

"Then it's your choice, sir. What do you want me to do?"

Sir Arthur blinks, nonplussed for the first time in this interview, and nearly drops his cigar from between two suddenly limp fingers. The boy watches him with those burning eyes. The boy who is already stronger in all the fields he has been trained in than any of the living agents Hellsing currently possesses. The boy who Sir Arthur firmly believes was born to bury the undead.

"You want your orders?"

"Yes, sir." Walter stares at him, eyes more intense than any Sir Arthur knows other than Hellsing's sole undead member. _Dorneas is definitely human. But also definitely not normal._

The knight nods once, grips his cigar tight between his fingers, and spits out the words. "Then you will learn how to kill, boy. You will become the best agent Hellsing has ever had. Understood?"

Walter snaps his already-straight back even straighter, and salutes. "Yes, sir."

_II: The Protective Advantage_

Sir Arthur isn't sure which is worse: the ghouls' timing, or the Krauts'.

He almost never goes on hunts himself; that's what he has dozens of troops, and Walter, and Alucard for (in that order of magnitude). But even rarer are hunts on which members of the Round Table come. He supposes there's something to be said for their wanting proof of the dangers he's constantly requesting more funding to combat, but it's very inconvenient. He sighs and puts the best face he can on it, and orders out the troops. The Round Table members don't need to know about Walter, still only twelve, and they don't need to be traumatized by Alucard. Nevertheless, because they can't afford carelessness, he brings the boy along purely in his servant role.

Things become a hell of a lot more inconvenient when the air raid sirens go off in the middle of the operation.

The troops escort them to a cleared area and then disappear, scrambling to complete the mission before the bombs begin to fall and the ghouls escape into the sewers like rats. The members of the Round Table gather in a corner, trying not to look as cowed as they are. Sir Arthur sits on a crooked chair in the abandoned set of flats they're clearing, and puts his feet up on a coffee table with a huge scar across its surface. Walter stands behind his right shoulder, to all appearances the perfect servant.

Far off somewhere in the direction of Chelsea there's an explosion. A few men sigh and relax, and are consequently taken entirely aback when the next bomb lands on the other side of the street.

The brick building, an ancient block of Whitechapel flats, bucks like a stung horse. Windows shatter, the wall on the right gives in, and plaster flakes down from the ceiling to cover them all in false snow that gleams in the electric torch-light. And, as the door snaps off its hinges, the first ghoul lurches inwards in search of warm bodies.

Sir Arthur, on his knees on the floor, looks up to stare at the grey figure. And then, before he can even reach for his holstered pistol, it collapses into a bloody pile with the sound of snickering wire. The knight turns to see Walter standing behind the now-overturned chair, a pile of rubble at his feet and his shirt covered in dust and plaster.

"Take care of the bloody things," snarls Sir Arthur, indicating the doorway with a curt gesture

"Yes, sir," intones Walter quietly with a cruel grin, and crosses swiftly to the doorway.

Outside, more bombs burst over London; the building shakes and groans and part of the outside wall begins to crumble away. The men scramble desperately away from it, crawling over loose brick and mortar and plaster on their hands and knees. Sir Arthur climbs to his feet and pulls his pistol from its holster. Walter is already gone, disappeared into the blackness of the corridor, but he can still hear the faint sound of the wires snickering. Sir Arthur shakes with each explosion, but keeps his feet; keeps his pistol aimed steadily at the door.

Walter returns just as another bomb lands close and the ceiling partially caves in, wood and plaster and ancient furniture raining down on them. And then the sirens die down, and there is nothing but silence broken by dry coughs.

Behind him, Sir Arthur knows the members of the Round Table will find their feet in a minute. And that they have just seen a twelve year-old boy slaughtering ghouls at his express orders.

He can't deal with this now. He doesn't even know what the hell's happened to his troops, whether the ghouls got them or the building did or whether they got their bloody wires crossed and are somewhere else all together. The last thing he needs to be explaining are his justifications for training a boy to kill.

Walter walks back through the debris scattered on the floor, apparently unbothered by the shifting footholds and the bits of ceiling still occasionally dropping down. What little white of his shirt is visible above his dark vest is splattered the dusty red of ghoul blood.

Sir Arthur snakes his hand out and grabs Walter's wrist as soon as the boy comes close enough and pulls him down, his feet shifting with a gravelly crunching noise. Walter snaps around, free hand upraised and fisted, then freezes with his eyes wide. Sir Arthur ignores the almost-attack and hisses sharply: "Play dead."

The boy gives him a confused look, but when he emphasises the order with a tug the thin wrist Walter complies, dropping into the rubble without ceremony.

The other members of the Round Table begin to dig their way out of the wreckage as Sir Arthur completely unearths himself, and scrambles to bend over Walter. "Walter? Walter?" He shakes the boy's shoulders; the boy lies still as per orders.

"Sir Arthur, _what_," begins Sir Wellock, scandalised, and breaks off in a fit of coughing.

Sir Arthur pulls Walter's vest open, and finds to his satisfaction that the blood has stained the white shirt below as well. Protected from the dust by the vest, this red is startlingly crimson in the lantern light. "Walter, are you alright?" he asks stiffly, in what he hopes is a choking voice. He gathers the boy up in his arms, preparing to make an escape from inconvenient questions.

"Sir Arthur, I insist you tell us what he is doing here," demands Sir Hammond, indicating the butler. "I heard you order him to get rid of those creatures. Have you been training –"

Walter's head lolls against his shoulder. "I need to get him help, he's just a child," says Sir Arthur, breaking in on the unwanted question.

"Really, Sir Arthur –"

Walter seizes sharply, brows furrowing, and begins to cough wetly. Sir Arthur is shocked to see blood on his lips, and splattered on his plaster-whitened cheek. "My God, Walter," he says, not acting now.

"Sir Arthur –" begins someone; he doesn't notice who.

"Shut up," he snarls, and stumbles hurriedly from the room.

The hall is dark and full of debris, and he trips up almost immediately against a hip-high impediment. He kicks it aside and keeps on, hoping the stairs are still in one piece.

"Nicely done, sir," says Walter from his arms.

Sir Arthur stops dead. It's too dark to see anything, even the boy.

"You can put me down, if you like. Unless you think you'd better carry me, sir, but I can't absolutely guarantee I took care of all of them." He sounds almost embarrassed by his possible failure in the face of darkness and explosions.

Sir Arthur mechanically does as he's told, and the boy slips down lithely with no sound of hesitation or hitch, smooth as a fish in water.

"I'll lead, shall I, sir?" says Walter, and begins to crunch over rubble. Sir Arthur follows.

"That… was quite good acting," he says at last. "Very convincing." Here in the dark he feels like nothing more than a voice.

"Thank you, sir. Of course, I've seen rather a lot of that sort of thing."

"Yes… and the blood?"

"I bit my cheek, sir. Simple, really."

"Yes, quite."

"You alright, sir?"

"Just get us out of here, Walter."

"Yes, sir."

They stumble out through the dark.

_III: The Height Advantage_

He knows it's pathetic, but Sir Arthur long ago accepted that in this job you have to be able to find light humour in unexpected places or else turn risk into a raving psychopath.

He still wouldn't admit that the only way he's found so far of getting back at his butler's constant attempts to quash his various light entertainments is by taking books out of the top shelf and leaving them for Walter to replace. On the high-backed conference chair. Which is, in fact, taller than him.

It shouldn't be amusing, but somehow watching the boy dragging the chair back and forth along the ancient shelves in his stocking feet to mount grumbling on its tapestry-seat and stand on his tiptoes to try to slot the books back into their places invariably brightens Sir Arthur's day.

_IV: The Age Advantage_

"And so," finishes Sir Arthur, with the proud smile of one who knows himself to be fully supported by the logic of his argument in the face of conflict, "we've enrolled you. Your first divisions are on Monday."

There's a long, chilly pause. And then the boy standing ramrod stiff on the other side of the desk in pristinely ironed slacks, shirt and vest, says very flatly, "You've enrolled me at Eton." It's not a question. It is, if anything, an accusation. Lounging up against the bookcase to Sir Arthur's right, Hellsing's resident vampire smirks wide beneath his yellow-tinted glasses.

"Exactly." Sir Andrew's smile doesn't shrink, but his lips do thin slightly in the face of his butler's icy reception. Anyone who had seen him shout down the entire assembled Round Table would have been surprised. But then, no one else has the deadliest man in England as their butler. A man who just happens to be thirteen.

"You want me to go swan around with a bunch of public-school ninnies, declining Latin nouns and playing cricket?"

Alucard makes a low sound in his throat which sounds vaguely like a snicker. Sir Arthur shoots him a glare, and turns back to continue in a strong and convincing tone.

"You happen to be perfectly suited to the mission. Just think of all the times we've had to send an escort along with you to have you admitted to bars and pubs."

Walter's eye twitches fractionally.

"Well," continues his master, "now you've got the advantage. Some _thing_ is using those boys as information sources, scouting the location and habits of aristocratic families. Interviews with the masters and staff and pupils have failed to turn up anything, but it can't be coincidence that five boys from three houses have lost a parent to vampires in the past month. Something's got a taste for blue blood, and it's using the school as its own private guidebook."

Walter's expression doesn't exactly change, but the atmosphere seems to grow chillier, and Sir Arthur hastens to continue, "Of course, it will be temporary. Just until you complete the mission."

The butler stares at him, grey eyes intense as always in a frozen face. "This isn't related to the party I made you cancel last week is it, sir?"

Sir Arthur contrives to look both shocked and hurt. "Of course not!"

"Because you received a letter from a Miss… Flopsy," Walter's eyes narrow slightly, "inquiring to which date the event was to be rescheduled."

Sir Arthur flushes. "I've told you about opening letters marked personal," he begins, and is cut off by the boy's withering tone.

"This one wasn't, sir. It was simply addressed 'to Sir Arty-Hearty." The words drop off his tongue like poisonous toadstools, ugly and festering. Alucard turns his face ceiling-ward and laughs like a hyena; it's made worse by the fact that Sir Arthur is perfectly aware that it's his embarrassment the vampire finds amusing. He flushes and turns to brush some imaginary dust from his shirt front. When he continues, it's the desk he addresses.

"Yes, well, regardless, you've got the wrong end of the stick. Men are dying – men of my set, I might add. And these boys are in danger as well. The perpetrator must be found and exterminated."

"In that case, sir, why not send Master Alucard? He is the expert – and no one wraps up cases as quickly as him." Walter indicates Alucard with a rude thumb. Alucard smiles toothily and returns the gesture with a ruder one.

Sir Arthur looks up again, and his face breaks into a warm smile; Walter regards him impassively. "Walter, don't sell yourself short – you are our finest soldier. The best man we have, and therefore exactly what England's peers deserve. And of course, age-wise…"

Walter's eyes narrowed further. "Alucard can appear in any form or age he chooses. And he is a peer himself."

Alucard's pointed teeth shine in the dim office as his grin widens.

"Yes, but somehow I don't think it would be wise to send Alucard to infiltrate a boys' school."

Walter raises an eyebrow, and allows the corner of his mouth to crook, revealing his own very white teeth. "And you think, sir, that it would be any wiser to send me?"

Sir Arthur gives him a glare, pulls out a heavy stamp, and rams it down on the mission submission in front of him. It reads, in red ink: APPROVED.

_0: The Truth_

"Your boy would be perfect, Arthur. Right age, right build, right looks. We've been after this ring for months, and still haven't been able to track them down. Every day we delay there's the chance of another child being taken." The new head of Scotland Yard, Round Table member Sir Gerald Stanley, leans forward, tapping the ash off the end of his cigarette.

Sir Arthur doesn't take any time with his answer. "No, Jerry."

"He's a proficient fighter, well-trained, able to look after himself. From what I've seen and read, he could take out the entire gang single-handed. And he'd probably enjoy it," the baronet adds with a malicious grin.

"No, Jerry."

"At least let me talk to him about it. If he agreed, and we worked out a time that was convenient –"

Sir Arthur stubs out his own cigar and stands. "No, Jerry," he says again, flatly. "My answer's final. You can't have Walter."

The man indicates the folder he's spread on the desk. "Arthur, _if_ their mothers are lucky enough to get their sons back, it's closed-coffin funerals. Every time. Your boy could end that."

"Nice to see you, Jerry." He rounds the desk and pauses by Sir Gerald's chair, one arm raised politely towards the door.

"Arthur, listen to me –"

Sir Arthur's eyes blaze. "No, Gerald, you listen to me. I've made that boy into a killer. Taught him to slaughter without mercy or compassion at a single word. You're right, he could take your entire goddamn gang – he could take your entire goddamn _force_. But whatever else he is, he is _mine_. I am the finger that pulls the trigger, because if it is not _me_ than someday it may be _him_, and then I will have created not just a killer but a monster. You may not have him. Good day."

Sir Gerald takes up his folder and stalks out of the room in a black mood, and Sir Arthur paces back around his desk and throws himself into his chair in an equally bad temper.

There's a slight change in texture in the room, neither colour nor temperature nor smell, but somehow something still detectable. Sir Arthur looks up, and sees Alucard's hat peeking over the top of one of the easy chairs.

"Not now, Alucard," he says coldly.

"Refusing to share your toys, Arthur? I don't remember you being so selfish."

"Shut up."

"Of course, our little reaper is special. Your soul's on the line with him. Even your ancestors never did something so despicable as teaching a child to kill," drawls the vampire.

"Shut up," he says again.

"But so long as you're the one who gives the orders, he's not _really_ killing, is he? So you're not really damned, are you?" Alucard straightens and turns to look over the top of the chair with one red eye. "You're not so foolish as that. You forfeited your soul to this job long before the Angel of Death. So what is it, really? Afraid he'll find a better master? Afraid he'll find more appealing pleasures? Afraid he'll come to resent you?"

"Don't be foolish," snaps Sir Arthur, picking up his cigar again, and then putting it down.

"Or maybe, you're trying to _protect_ him," sneers Alucard.

Sir Arthur doesn't flinch. But he doesn't show disdain either.

"Oh, _Arthur_," says the vampire, somewhere between pity and disgust. "How _sweet_. Protecting the boy's virtue."

"I am not –"

"Keeping the evils of the world from his pure eyes, keeping him safe and clean," continues Alucard, sarcastically.

"He is a _child_." Pushed against the wall, the words tumble out before he can stop them; even as he says it he knows how ridiculous it is. Alucard, as ever, pulls no punches.

"You didn't care about his age when you hired him. You didn't care when you gave him your uncle's gloves. You didn't care when you sent him out on his first mission. You didn't care when he came home covered in blood for the first time. But you care now? Don't be ridiculous."

"It is my choice to make." Sir Arthur takes refuge in facts, in truth. Alucard shrugs disdainfully.

"Of course, my master."

"And it is made. You may go, Alucard."

The vampire rises and bows, deep and ironical.

Sir Arthur lights his cigar with steady hands, tucks away his lighter calmly in his pocket. And then he picks up the ash tray and hurls it at the far wall.

END


End file.
